


Two can be as bad as One

by Keenir



Series: Final Battles [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Adam and Eve syndrome, Gen, Thor: The Dark World Trailer, au coda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only three people survived the great battle that ended in victory for Asgard.  In a week, there will only be two people.</p><p>What do you do, when you are one of those long-lived survivors?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The ending leads to...

There is a great and heavy and mighty door at the foot of the prison stairs, and only after passing them may you see or speak to the prisoners. Or prisoner, as there was only one presently. There is another great and mighty and heavy door at the top of the stairs, at the entrance of the prison.

The single solitary prisoner sat alone in his clear cage, black hair already grown long enough to perch upon his shoulders like (unkept/unkempt) ravens. He doesn’t lie with a deceiving smile aimed her way, just acknowledges she’s there with a genuine one, like she’s the one welcome experience he’s had in his entire captivity.

“What are we to do with you?” Sif asks, and her tongue is weighed to silence by the abundance of names which she could possibly call Loki, some more polite than others, some more familiar than others, some more scathing than others; so she says none of them.

“You could let me go,” Loki said.

“I -”

“Not finished. You could let me go, you could keep me as a pet or a servant or a personal guard; you could run away with me; you could join me in here; you could flay me; you could torment me in any possible way; you could -”

“Given this a bit of thought, have we?” Sif asked, more amused than anything; and of her body’s reaction to some of the suggestions, she’s keeping that internal.

“Thoughts aside, what do I have in here?” Loki asked her, hands as expressive as ever.

“Yourself,” she replies before she can realize what a loki-ish statement she just made – at once blindingly obvious, with shades of potential innuendo.

But if Loki himself detects that, he gives no hint of it, beyond “There is that.”

“And what else?” Sif asks, curious.

“An absence of dreams,” Loki says.

She considers telling him some of hers - _he used to enjoy that, even if he hid his interest as a curiosity if I had any untapped augury talents._

Both of the prison doors – upper and lower – slammed shut, their edges sealing smooth with each other and the surrounding walls.

Sif leaps through the cage’s entrance, grabbing Loki’s throat one-handed and shoving him flush against the clear wall in a move so fluid that anyone else would have thought she had practiced it. “What did you do?” she demands to know, and only the visible whites of her eyes hint that she is not as single-minded as she may seem.

“Had I desired to be alone with you, Sif, surely one of us could have thought of something simpler,” Loki pointed out.

“When did you ever favor simplicity?”

“A point. But this…” his eyes looking around. “A bit much, even for one of my repute.”

“I suppose,” Sif said, letting him go. “But if it was not your doing, then for the prison doors to seal themselves shut…” and Loki can see a different breed of fear taking roost in Sif’s face and body.

“War will miss the battle, unless someone breaches the sealed door,” Loki observed. “Would that not be a more deserving challenge, to fight someone so accomplished, rather than any random soldier whose skill consists only of being able to carry a blade?”

“It would,” she admits, and feels slightly better. _But I would still rather be on the field of battle, to defend Asgard against whomever is besieging us._ Sif leaned her back against the clear wall, and was slowly sliding down to a sitting position, when –

“So, do you know any good songs?” he asked her.

“What?”

“Unless you would rather pass the time in another manner.”

She suspected the isolation was affecting him more than he knew; not because of the question itself, _Such an innocuous-sounding question, and yet… Is that a faint blush on your cheek, Silvertongue? Because I don’t believe there’s one on mine._ “Surely you know plenty of songs,” Sif told him.

“Mine all rhyme.”

“I only know one which doesn’t… Hrothgar taught me this one -”

_Not the drinking song…_ Loki thought with a mental groan. But he didn’t interrupt Sif’s recital of it.

**~~**

Eventually the great doors unseal and open. Sif is on her feet in the next instant, looking to see if anyone is entering the prison, her muscles ready, her nerves primed.

Nothing is on the other side but empty stairs.

“I sense no magic that should not be there,” Loki said. “Thus, if not by someone’s hand or will… I am sorry, Sif, but it was automatic.”

She knows he means the doors. “That only means the fighting has ended enough for me to join the fray,” she says. _No risk to security, which means all the really-powerful enemies out there are dead and gone, and the foe’s numbers are no longer high enough to swarm the prison._

Sif takes a step toward the door, and before she can take another, her intentions are read by he who knew her well in a battle and in an argument:

“You would leave me here?” and there’s something in the question, a quality that hadn’t been in earlier statements or questions, in here or in other places. Not that she can remember, at least.

“Never fear, Loki,” she says, and her lips have what could almost be a smile at that remark. “If I find anyone out there, I’ll bring them here. If I don’t, then I will keep looking.”

“Would you have me wish all survived?” Loki asked her.

She shakes her head at him and his words, and she heads out the doors and back to the world beyond…even as the smoke drifts down the stairs.

**~~**

Sif is true to her word, and searches all of Asgard for survivors. Brings the only one back to the prison.

Loki stands up as Sif carries Volstagg towards Loki’s cage and shoves the entrance open with a foot. “

None of them bother to mince words – even if there had been anything in the way of medicines in storage here, for Loki or for past prisoners, it would not matter – Volstagg’s wounds are too severe.

“How long do I have?” laying alone on Loki's bed, he asks Sif while, above the ground that is the prison roof, night falls once more across Asgard. While his only surviving friends sit on either side of him, finishing the patching-up of him.

“Three days,” Sif says. “Five, if all proceeds fortunately and your infection abates.”

Volstagg considered that. “Then let us make them fine days!”

_Can’t argue with that sentiment,_ Loki muses. “What shall we do first, mi’lord?” he asks, shedding the venom he would have given those words to Thor, omitting the sarcasm most others would have received; can’t cut out all the weariness, though.

“Me, a lord… Hmm,” Volstagg says. “We could rebuild Asgard to the heights it enjoyed at the peaks of its glory. We could go to another Realm and guide them as we once tried halfheartedly to do. We could spend all our days in a wilderness and never know another face or voice.”

_Does such a wilderness exist anywhere in the Nine Realms?_ Sif wondered.

“There is such a place, or there should be,” Loki said after a thoughtful silence, which made Sif wonder if she had asked her thought aloud.

“There is?” Volstagg asked.

“Utgard. Abandoned by Jotunheim long before Thor’s humans ever clambered out of the trees, it’s been a no-mans-land for so long that if Utgard lacks wilderness, then wilderness exists nowhere in the cosmos. It is, of course, your decision, good Volstagg; this was, after all, your idea.”

“Utgarda-Volstagg. I like the sound of it,” he grinned. “But first…do you have any food in this bowl of yours?”

“I believe there is a small store I can access,” Loki said, went to the storage closet, and brought back several loaves of bread and flasks of water. “This is all that was in.”

**~~**  
 **On Utgard:**


	2. ...into a new beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first day after Ragnarok. That's what it is for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Old English: grammar and reader by Robert E. Diamond, lists "ʒ" (as in ʒewadan) as a palatalized _g_...aka "the _y_ sound in _yet_ ".

**DAY ONE**

"That should suffice," Volstagg said, stepping back from the Bifrost Observatory controls. _A Gatekeeper's mind and body grow to sync with the controls and systems; but until that comes to pass for each Gatekeeper in turn, the controls must be used. I was being groomed to succeed Heimdall one day - and now I use what I learned._ "The Bifrost will be on long enough for us to set foot on Utgard. It will turn itself off right after we arrive - assuming we go immediately."

 _And never again will the Bifrost be used by anyone. Ever,_ was the thought all three of them had as they stepped into the blazing lights of the Bifrost.

They are the _here-láf,_ the _remnant of an army._ There were times, episodes in the annals of Asgard's long history, when the entire population had been mobilized and marched to war. These three survivors were here-láf in every way. Sif Herelaf, Volstagg Herelaf, and Loki Herelaf.

The Herelaf Three landed upon Utgard in a refracting snowstorm of kicked-up crystals and waxy leaves tumbled and spun by the interstellar force which was called Bifrost, and lasted well after the traveling light had abandoned them on this planet bereft on the territorial edges of Realms. Volstagg curled his fingers into fists as much to focus his mind away from the pain, as to keep the chill from penetrating too quickly; he, Loki, and Sif stood still and waited for the journeystorm to die down. _Could be worse. Could have landed in a manure field._

A twilit scene surrounded them, a clearing in the midst of evergreen woods festooned with polar cacti. Sif tilted her head, thinking she heard something making noise far sooner than animals would normally be moving about so soon in the wake of a Bifrost's activity.

Loki saw the slow smile stretch across Sif's face, something rather like relief. _Glee she will not be stuck with I and me alone after Volstagg's passing._ As for himself, Loki splayed his fingers and motionlessly felt the air and earth around him, tasting the strength of magic here. _Not too terribly weak, though even Midgard had more than does Utgard presently._

The three of them could hear the crunch of feet walking through snow's crisp crust, and as one they turned towards it. Towards the huddled figure shambling quickly through the woods and stopping just shy of the edge of their clearing. It staring at them.

Two huge open eyes. A collection of smaller, closed eyes and shut orifices.

It reminded Loki of the sea life he and Thor had caught, once upon a time. _Those fishes and whales have land cousins here in Utgard, I see._

Sif saw the clothes it wore, and knew that in itself was no indicator of intelligence - _How many times did my foremothers play dress-up with the apes of Midgard before the humans finally figured out how to shape a stone or walk upright?_ What *was* indicative was -

"You are uphill. You are upstream," the alien told them, and turn and ran in another direction.

...or tried to, being tackled to the frozen ground not a dozen feet away by others of its kind, who only too late noticed Loki and Volstagg walking towards them, Sif watching their backs.

These others, however, were bundled up in thick layers of fur all over, but for on their bare faces. Every eye was looking at them, every nostril open, every ear unpuckered. "Greetings!" Volstagg said cheerfully, to break the metaphorical conversation ice. "What is your intention?"

In lieu of a spoken answer, the Utgarders took themselves off the one who had spoken, and rolled that one towards the three Asgardians.

"Bribe?" Loki asked. "Sacrifice? Servant?" and got no reply from the natives.

"Perhaps only some of them can speak," Sif said. _Which would make them a younger race than they already appeared._

Half expecting one of them to be able to do the same and show him up, Loki held out a hand and used his magic to levitate the tackled Utgarder who had spoken to them. "What is your name?" he asked it.

"Last," it answered. "They pursued Last until they captured me."

"And why were they pursuing you?" Loki asked.

"To add me to their chieftaness' collection."

"Collection of what?" Sif asked.

"Husbands. I am Last, last of my," and uttered a word which had no Allspeech translation; 'tribe' came closest, but was an inexact match.

Hearing the answer of Last, Sif wasn't the only Asgardian who drew their arms. _One of the more original First Contacts, to be sure. Still, even if we fall, we stand for something._

"Explain," Loki challenged them.

One of the tacklers shuffled forward - they had no other gait. "I am Upended. Our chieftaness bid us gather up Last. Before she proclaimed that instruction, Last's tribe was decimated by the Waterlungs tribe."

"This is true," Last said.

Sif told Last, "For now, you are ours, under our protection." To Upended, she said, "Would you introduce us to your chieftaness? I think we would like a word," and Loki and Volstagg nodded.

"We shall," Upended said. "Come, she is tailwards of us," and he and his fellows turned back the way they had come. "Come, she is headwards of us."

"Body-based direction system, rather like Midgard," Loki said quiet enough to only be heard by himself, Volstagg, and Sif. "Or it's a ritual formula they have to do each time they're about to head back home."

"Loki?" Sif asked.

"Hm?" he asked, then looked where Sif was pointing her gaze. "Of course," and set Last back down on the ground.

It would be midnight before they arrived at the settlement Upended and his chieftaness called home.

**~~~**  
 **DAY TWO**

As the sun began to rise incrementally above the horizon, Sif and Volstagg and Loki were still in the largest roundhouse, sitting beside the roaring fire in the center; also beside the center was the chieftaness, whose name was Righter - she said, "The tribe of Last lost their name in warfare with the Waterlungs, enemies they and my tribe both oppose. Having always been dedicated to the passing of the Waterlungs, all I could do in addition was to salvage what wisdom Last can provide."

"He was running away," Sif said. Only at the feet of the Asgardians had Last laid down and gone to sleep while his protectors spoke with the chieftaness and her advisors.

"My tribe resembles the Waterlungs physically moreso than we do Last's own people," chieftaness Righter answered her. "We decapitated our enemy and aggressively shadowed their too numerous survivors out from our ancestral home, the Strigil Valleys. In fleeing, they destroyed Last's tribe. Then came mine, at the pawpads of our shared enemy."

"And what will you be doing once the Waterlungs are no more?" Volstagg asked. 

"The wisdom of Last will, may it occur, spread through our once-holdings in Strigil Valleys while also returning to the horizons the wisdom held when all of Last's people had holding here," Righter said. "What will you be doing once you are assured I am forthright and truthful of intentions regarding Last?"

The three Asgardians looked to one another for a long moment before, "Our holding has also been done great damage," Loki said. "We come here to make a new holding, a residence."

"And what of the enemy who drove you from your prior holding?"

"An enemy who has been vanquished, destroyed from the universe," Volstagg said. " _We_ were the victors."

That was news which Righter needed to digest, to grasp it fully and understand. _A people who win, they are the ones whose holding expands and spreads. A people who are defeated, they are the ones who flee and are incorporated by many holdings. To win and yet have to leave their holding..._ "Then _reside_ in my holding for as long as you need be," she told them. "I grant you all my rights and latitudes, greater even than a guest may enjoy. Upended will show you to canidate _residence_ s you may select from," Righter said, and laid down, basking in the warmth of the flames.

"Thank you," the Asgardians said, ready to sleep.

 _Can't say this will be a dull place to live the rest of my days,_ Volstagg thought with a smile.

They called themselves _ʒe-wadan_ , to _go, advance_. Their fireside stories told of peaceful underwater lives forever interupted by ice hurling them out onto the chill land, and all of history had been their advancing away from the ice-capped poles. This radical change in existence had made them _ʒewadan_ against animals which would eat their new foodstuffs as well, and tribal warfare had eventually grown from that. They were the Gewadan, proud and brave and mighty.


	3. Three becomes two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are many forms of immortality." -Ra's Al Ghul to Bruce Wayne; _The Dark Knight Rises_.
> 
> The passing of Volstagg, talk of children and thoughts of progress, and the question of what might lurk in the stars.

**DAY FIVE**

As he and Sif watched Last and the other student hold up the blades to the wan afternoon sunlight, Loki thought, _In little more than four days, Volstagg has managed to lift them up from the Stone Age and hurl them into the Iron Age, Sif has introduced the Gewadan to new worlds of hunting and conservation and military strategy, and -_ and Loki noticed once more that the Gewadan didn't cheer or celebrate when a thing was accomplished. _They observe, and continue on. They learn, oh unquestionably they learn._

Sif watched the marking of the students' accomplishment, and felt a wave of pride in what had been wrought; pride which was dampened by knowledge of what was going to happen. _'A miracle', mortals would say, that Volstagg has lasted this many more days than I had initially estimated he had to him when I brought him off the battlefield and we formed the idea of coming here._ She smiled at the look on Volstagg's face as his students gave him honors.

Then did Last and his fellow student lower the blades and place the grips in Volstagg's hands, lowering themselves beside his sitting form. "You both did good work," Volstagg told them. _As did I. I may not have the skill at magic that Loki enjoys or Odin and Heimdall enjoyed, but I have always been competent enough at the low-level magics which keep our armor self-repairing and can be used for various small things. And_ that _is what else I have taught my apprentices, besides metalworking itself._

And both apprentices placed their new swords on opposite sides of Volstagg, then backed away so others could pay their respects to the living Volstagg.

Next to step forward was Sif, who hesitated only a second before wrapping her arms around him, a hesitation borne of lifelong restraint in so many things. "I am glad that I was wrong," she said to him, "and sorrowful that yet I was right."

"Cattle die, kindred die," Volstagg said with a smile.

Sif's lips quirked up. "Quoting from the Einherjar, my friend?" _Of all our party, I was the only one who started in the Einherjar. The rest of you, began with military training. But that you remember..._ "You have always been good to know, Volstagg my friend. My back sings the praise of the axe who shielded her in mêlées against all who came at us." _And for your assistance when I needed to work on how to fight with shields._

"As does my back, for the glaive who guarded him from injury on the battlefield. It is my hope that you live well for longer than the Allfather did, good Sif, brave Sif, clever Sif."

"In that case, I shall understand if you do not wait for my arrival, before you come to rule the world and life which comes after this one."

"Someone has to get it ready," he offered with ease. "It shall be ready by the time you arrive."

"It was an honor to know you," Sif said.

Volstagg replied, "Yes. And it was an honor to know you as well. And there is a thing you must know."

**~~**

Loki watched as Sif and Volstagg switched from conversing, to Volstagg whispering something in her ear. Watched as, that done, Sif pressed her forehead and nose against Volstagg's, for several minutes.

And then she backed away, giving Loki silent leave to say to Volstagg what he was going to say.

Loki stepped over to Volstagg, embracing him in a hug. "Valhalla will be richer with you," Loki said, and as stock as the phrase was, Loki could feel the truth in it.

"There were adventures we three had, you, Sif, and I," Volstagg said.

"There were, and great ones."

"That had best not stop when I do," he warned Loki.

"It will not cease," Loki assured him. "Though the balance of the sport will change."

"It will, I've no doubt," Volstagg said. "But I recall it changed when Sigyn left, and again when Hod quit the Realms. Our adventures never again unfolded the same way, but we continued to enjoy what we did."

"We did indeed," Loki agreed.

When Loki offered up no other words, Volstagg chuckled. "The silver tongue is silent? Wonder of wonders."

"Silver is persuasion, my friend. Would that I could use my words or my magic to put off this parting, I would not hesitate to flourish and summon and conjure and flatter. I would argue in flyting until even death rolls over and shows her throat."

"I know," he said, patting Loki's back. "I know you would. That makes all the difference to me, good friend Loki." _There were unfortunate incidents in our shared past, I know it, some being unpleasant - but you always emerged on our side when it mattered most._ "You would outmaneuver it, Sif would carve it up, I would lay into it. This, we have always been ready to do on one another's behalf."

"Volstagg the Wise. As ever, good with words, even if rarely credited for such."

"Better with words than most, perhaps, but -"

"Without you to sharpen against, where would I have gained the verbal skill I am famed for?" Loki interupted him. "To your credit."

**~~**

Sif watched as the mens' voices dropped to the whisper for relaying a secret, watched as Loki touched his forehead to Volstagg's momentarily, and then crouched at Volstagg's feet.

And there was nothing else to do. For with that, Volstagg passed from life into memory, his body rendered cold with a swiftness which would never happen on Asgard.

A long span of silence passed before anyone breathed a crack into the perfect stillness: Sif breathed "One less."

Loki stood and turned on her, his eyes fierce and glaring. But he had nothing to refute what she said, and they both knew it.

He sat back down beside Volstagg and watched the body a while longer, during which time Sif walked out. _If I had ever been asked who would outlive_ me _, I would have stated assuredly that you and Sif would be those survivors. And now you make a lie of that thought, but only just._ And an idea spread a feral grin across Loki's face. Standing, Loki called for "Upended!"

When that grappler arrived, Loki asked him, "The Waterlungs still exist, do they not?"

"They do," Upended said.

"Then it shall be their corpses which are Volstagg's pyre," thought it would be best to invite Sif to participate.

Pleased with that idea, Upended asked, "Which strategem shall we use to rub them into death?"

"None. This is play," Loki said, placing a hand where most beings kept their shoulder, feeling the magic course into the native, reshaping him into something suitable for the task: something strong, something fast, something invulnerable, something untiring. And something which would collapse and die when the task was done; _I learned my lesson the last time._ When Upended's transformation was completed, "Now, let us go hunting," Loki howled.

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**  
 **The 100th Year:**

Outside, it was a particularly fierce blizzard in an unusually frigid winter. Indoors, it was warm as midsummer on Asgard.

While it was rare for a month to go by without them exchanging words about one topic or matter or another, days could and did pass with the two of them saying nothing but enjoying the warmth offered by the fire, enjoying the presence and company of one another, each in their respective couches.

"I thank you for not bringing up the matter," Sif told him one day as the two of them sat and watched the central flame in this roundhouse which had been built for the two of them; there were three suites attached - one for each of them, including dead Volstagg's memory.

"There are many matters I have not brought up," Loki said, already at work thinking over all the things he had and hadn't said to Sif over the past century, all the things he had and hadn't said to the Utgarders, the Gewadan over that time.

"You and I," Sif said, answering: "Children."

Loki stiffened as she hadn't seen him stiffen so, not in a long time. "There is no point," Loki said. _I am a Frost Giant. You are an Asgardian. Hybrid vigor only goes so far._ He felt it wasn't needed to point out he hadn't had sex in a millenia.

"Agreed. To have a child would be to curse the child with a lifetime spent alone."

"Unless the child grows into feelings for a native," Loki said, "not dissimilar from Thor's experience."

 _That you can at last say your brother's name without venom... I am glad of it._ "That could happen. But it will not happen."

"We will have no children," Loki agreed. _I still have no idea what kind of magics were used by the Allfather to bind me to this shape and physiology - when I broke my leg as a boy, it was Asgardian bone and muscle which were knitted into repair, not Jotun sinews._ "Two is no number for multiplication. Nor would three have been, even had Volstagg been in better condition."

Sif nodded. "Even the numbers which produced my brother Heimdall, would not suffice." Nine mothers. _And part of knowing how to defend something, is to understand its vulnerabilities, such as_ "We of Asgard were always ever on the cusp of extinction." _Particularly in terms of numbers._ "Here, we are freed from concern," _which unsettled me for a long time here - everything of Asgard was entirely voluntary here: laws, customs, friendships. Loki and Volstagg could have gone off on their own separate ways; and while the Gewadan are nice enough company..._ "Here, we are," Sif said at last.

"Indeed so," Loki said, agreeing.

They kept there for a while longer, until the blizzard came to an end, when Loki excused himself to go starwatching. _Re-taking up an old hobby I had thought he had lost interest in centuries before the Frost Giants invaded the Armory,_ Sif thought, and saw nothing odd in that - she herself had taken up a long-disused pasttime of her own this past century.

Stepping outside, door sealing behind him, Loki kept his eyes on the sky while his magic and kinesthetic senses navigated him on a slow walk through this settlement. A few stars had died during the War which had begun with his fall from the Bifrost and ended in the battle of Asgard, and that was beginning to become visible as starlight came to a noticeable end here and there; but those were ones he knew to expect their passing, and could see no unexpected disappearances or oddities in the night sky.

The study of the night sky and the daytime stars was advancing by leaps and bounds, the Gewadan progressing swiftly with the occasional nudges of the Asgardians. Loki knew it would only be a matter of time - a few centuries, maybe a millenia, before there were early forays into leaving the atmosphere... and from there, orbit and beyond, in time. Which begged a question Loki thought of a great deal:

The Enemy had thrown all their resources at Asgard - Thanos, Thanatos, and all the others had been in the assault which Volstagg and the others had defeated at great cost. _But what failsafes did they leave behind? What moves into the places the Enemy once roamed?_

_There is no way to know without going out there and looking around...and to go out there into what may well be a trap designed to wait for us to step off this world of self-imposed exile..._

Watching a bevy of Gewadan tumbling by, Loki knew there was only one solution: _Build up this race until they are more than a match for_ anything _which may yet be out there._ And he smiled. _Time is on our side._

**~~**

Sif too was out this night, on the opposite side of the settlement, looking over the design plans a bundle of Gewadan had brought to her. "This will work," she told them.

Their earlier talk of children, and by extension the childlike Utgarders, invited the inevitable comparisons to mind; particularly now when thoughts turned to innovation. When the three of them had walked into their first native settlement, sewage had flowed down open grooves in the middle of each walkway, pooling at various points at the settlement's edge; in less than ten years, the underlying workings of disease vs sanitation was known by the Utgarders, complete with enclosed sewers which emptied only at a distance from its community of origin - cutting disease and mortality by more than half.

 _Asgard's society worked so well because we all knew the tasks we need do,_ Sif reflected. _Even I had my place and the duty I carried out. Asgard's vast library was a fallback position, in case one of us died of wounds before able to pass on what that one knew. Volstagg taught his students here, who went on to teach their own students; he did the same as I and Loki are doing. But there are gaps in what we know and can pass along to the Gewadan; so we build up edifices of what we can give them, and encourage them to make connections,_ and tried not to recall the deployment of a sewer-cannon in Utgard's wartime; _Rightly or wrongly in the longer term, I and Loki forbade the further use of that type of weapon._


	4. Arguments Of The Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For so much time, for so very long, Utgard is denied travel into space.
> 
> When it is permitted, it is for a sorrowful reason.

**One Thousand Years after Ragnarok**

Sif sat and listened to the youths pelt her with questions about the once-abode of the gods, _a topic that never grows tiresome for them. And keeps the memories fresh for me and, better or worse, for Loki as well._

The more common questions were "What was Asgard like?" "What glories did you live amongst?" _Those are easy enough to answer, particularly the latter. 'The same glories we have shared and are teaching your people.'_

Then came a very rare question, the sort of query which was posed only once a century on average: "Do gods reproduce?"

Sif tried not to recall with any vividness the philosophical debates which had raged in the early centuries about that - _Were it not for I and Loki's intervention, there would have been bloodbaths._ "No longer," she answered, and called for the day's end to the question time. As the people herded themselves out and to their duties and families, Sif turned and went to her own hearth here (technically there was one for her and Loki in every settlement even to this day)

**~~**

By now, Utgard had rockets and more. So Sif broached the issue once more.

"We have discussed this," Loki said. "Time and again."

"Of that, I am more than aware," Sif said. "I _am_ aware that it has only been a mere thousand years. But there has been no sign of anything but the continued vanishing of the more distant stars. Nothing closer, be it threat or otherwise."

"It could be a sign of nothing," Loki agreed. "Or it could be a ruse."

"There is no deception. If anything but us survived Ragnarok, they have since fallen further than the Utgarders had been when Volstagg came here with us."

"Would that that were true," Loki said, his face haunted as it rarely had been since coming here; only talk of star travel was prone to bringing it to the fore. "I would give much for that to be true. But I also know well the masters manipulating the forces our comrades fought during and preceeding Ragnarok."

 _Which includes..._ Sif knew, "Your Chitauri."

Only the barest of a nod. "They were a small finger of one hand of the armada of their master. The Chitauri were base brutes, more beastial when unsupervised than we have ever known the Utgarders to have been; the one controlling the controllers of the Chitauri, in contrast, had a mind more akin to Odin or to slippery Aegir."

"The people here have rockets capable of swift travel to other worlds in their solar system. How long are we to be expected to keep them bound to this one world?"

"Just a while longer," Loki said, knowing how false it rang in his own ears.

But Sif did not call him on it. She simply looked at him a while, before she walked away.

 _We disagree time and again, not always on the same matters,_ Loki knew, _and few times do the Gewedan even know._

**~~**

Sif sat in her favorite chair, stroking Syn's back when the broadshouldered one came over. "I know," Sif said.

Syn was a biglarva. All children of the Gewadan race became adults. But not all larvae became children, even in this day and age; some larvae simply continued growing in size and strength but not in intellect: biglarva. Pets.

Named for an old friend of hers - the Blocker of the Ways, the Preventer - Syn was a confidant of sorts. The alternative was slow madness.

"I want to object, to lead the Utgarders into the heavens and its space," Sif said to Syn. "But then I ask myself, How long would I wait if time were the only obstacle to destroying my enemy?" Sif sighed. "And a thousand years is not very long, unless one is of Utgard or Midgard."

Syn played the pipe music that were the natural sounds of a biglarva, like the happy bark of a wolf or the lowing of a ðro back on Asgard.

"Of course not. I have no intention of telling Loki he was right, not this week," Sif said with a smile.

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**  
 **One Million Years After Ragnarok:**

Sif looked at Loki and gave him a confirming nod. They each flicked one hand, and then were on the observation chamber in orbit around Utgard. 

The teleportation had no fancy lights or smells or rippling airs - it was a simple change of location. Only a lifetime of Bifrost transiting kept Sif steady on her feet through this lesser thing.

Two million years was as long as most Asgardians lived, Odin excepted. Many of that most never saw their the full two million however, and Sif was one of those, as it was turning out.

That was why, a decade ago, Loki had suggested an Utgarder space program... _knowing I would approve it,_ Sif said, still wondering at the back of her mind that question: where would an Enemy come from?

She touched her fingertips to the back of his hand; even now, touch was as much as they permitted themselves: the argument for furthering would end the same way, and thus had not been raised in millennia.

"A change in tactics," Sif said, knowing the shift was as much Loki's doing as it was hers. "Now the Gewadan shall spread, scouring the cosmos for anyone who is still there." _They have the population and the technology in spades, though I remain unsure why Thor and Volstagg ever picked up that expression from the humans._

"May we inquire to the reason?" one medic asked, full deference on display in posture.

"There was a wager," Loki said, a half-truth of sorts. "If I am correct, then my friend will die in battle," _in glorious battle as she always wished._ "If I am wrong, then my friend will die knowing she has beaten me."

 _All true. And I am dying,_ Sif knew.

**~~~**

They stayed out there and supervised the expansion of Utgard's population into the heavens, personally venturing forth on the more promising places. For the most part, they found nothing higher than microscopic predatory plankton. And then...

**~~**  
 **One Million, Five Thousand, Three Hundred, Two Years After Ragnarok:**

Loki caught Sif when she started to collapse here in Aegir's hall.

Once, Aegir's hall had been scores of fathoms beneath the saline sea of his world. Aegir alone, that being from bygone times, controlled who could reach his hall and be his guest.

Now, Aegir's hall stood on the baked ground, the ocean having left at some point since Ragnarok.

"Ironic," Sif said, managing a smile. "You spun the greatest stories in this place. We both did. Such tales."

Loki nodded. "Grand tales worthy of eddas. Adventures and wars and cleverness - you were quite clever, I recall - with such plots and lessons and not unkind twists to the tellings."

"You invented some rather curious characters, as I recall. With names such as Sigyn and Ullr and Magni."

"Yes, because Angrboda was such a normal name that none blinked when you made the tale that she was my helpmeet and wife," Loki said, enjoying Sif's look of amusement. "Or the grand romance of Ottar and Jarnsaxa."

"I was proud of that one."

"You had all rights to be."

Sif's smile faded into another expression. "And then there was one," Sif said, recalling her words when Volstagg had passed on.

Loki flexed his fingers, but stilled them as he looked into Sif's eyes, reading the message there: that if he used magic - of any sort, even Gewadan technology-magic - she would kill him, and she would die as well. Right now, he was tempted to do that, to let **that** be the end.

_But then Sif would die angry, and I cannot do that to her._

**Author's Note:**

> If myth records Loki as "Utgarda-Loki"...then he should be "Utgarda-Volstagg"...right?


End file.
